Where Does America Rank on Health?

It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.

-Jackie Mason

From "One Minute Wellness" by Dr. Ben Lerner with Dr. Greg Loman:

America is the technological superpower, the wealthiest nation in the world, and spends significantly more of its gross national product, and spends more per person, than any other nation in the world on healthcare. So where, then, does America stand on health? We should be right at the top, right?

Of thirteen countries studied in a recent comparison, the United States ranked an average of twelfth (second from bottom) in sixteen available health indicators.

As Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Heath shockingly describes, the answer is that the U.S. health-care system itself, and not lifestyle or a lack of technology, is actually the major contributor to our low ranking and our poor health.

The word iatrogenic means death induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. This term is used especially if there is a complication following a treatment or during the course of a stay in the hospital. The people who die due to what are classified as iatrogenic causes are people who would not have died if doctors had properly diagnosed and treated them.

New research shows that the estimated total number of deaths induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures-in the U.S. annually-is between 783,936 and 999,936. From these updated numbers it becomes evident that our conventional, modern medical system is itself the leading cause of death and injury in the U.S., as approximately 699,697 Americans died of heart disease in 2001 and 553,251 died of cancer.